The city administration continuously produces data that startups and other innovators can use to develop new products and solutions. For example, traffic data can accelerate new smart city technologies. To simplify startups' access to public data, the state capital of Munich and the Digital Product School, a program of the incubator UnternehmerTUM, launched the platform munich-data.org. This free platform connects interested parties with public data sources. Lutz-Steffen Schmidt, Head of the Innovation Center at the municipal company it@M, says:
“The Munichdata platform presented here offers, as a first step, a data request platform where startups in particular can request data from LHM that they need for their activities.”
In an initial trial run, experiences with the demand for public data will be collected and evaluated over the first six weeks. In the first week after the platform went online, more than ten requests were submitted, and the first ones have already been processed. The results will be presented to the Munich City Council in September, according to Schmidt.
Thomas Bönig, Head of the IT Department of the City of Munich, says:
"UTUM (Editor's note: UnternehmerTUM) has long maintained close ties with the state capital of Munich and implemented several joint projects. Due to the close contacts and the UTUM's high level of expertise in supporting startups, the joint idea of jointly implementing innovative ideas in the area of open source and breaking new ground in the process arose in workshops between UTUM and the IT department. The LHM (Editor's note: State capital Munich) is convinced that with UTUM, it has gained an exclusive partner who is one of the best in the market and thus offers a high guarantee of success for LHM."
Open data platform is to “develop into one of the leading public data portals in the future”
Schmidt explains that they want to make much more data available to the city of Munich in the form of public data in the future. To achieve this, existing barriers among data owners must be removed. He says:
"The medium-term goal of the Munichdata platform is to have a portal through which a large amount of data is made publicly available via defined interfaces and further processable formats, and through which the portal will develop into one of the leading public data portals in terms of usability and data richness."
Further projects with the Digital Product School are also planned for the near future.
“Once the cooperation has been established and proven successful, it is planned to involve other departments of the LHM in the collaboration,”
said Munich IT consultant Bönig.
